April 7, 2016

Kenneth Caster - Geology Professor UC

I had the distinct pleasure to meet and be taught by Dr. Kenneth Caster at the University of Cincinnati (UC) between 1972 and 1974. He's one of a small handful of college professors that left an indelible imprint in my brain, fortunately for the better.

The first and only class I took from Dr. Caster was Historical geology. This is a class about the fossil record of the geologic record.

It's a topic deeper than the Mariana Trench in the Pacific Ocean, and it gets deeper by the day as more new information about the historical record of animals and plants is discovered.

One of my most profound memories of Dr. Caster was his royal demeanor. He was a world-renowned geologist by the time I got to UC and he knew it. He had an entourage of graduate students that followed him down the hallways hanging on his every word.

As an undergraduate student I don't ever recall him saying "Hello" to me while passing in the hallways going to and from class. It's as if I was invisible. That's okay, because he was probably contemplating more behavior discoveries about horseshoe crabs.

When he'd come to teach each class of mine, he'd have an 8-inch pile of books, papers and folders in his arms. I now think it was just a clever prop he used to intimidate us.

He'd immediately begin to teach and completely fill all of the blackboard space with impossible Latin names of the fossils. To keep up, you had to know shorthand.

When it came time for a test, Dr. Caster would walk into the room head held high, he straighten the test papers on the lectern and gaze slowly across the entire class and utter these words, "Today we're here to test the depths of your ignorance." It was the most intimidating thing I've ever experienced from a professor.

But it was true.

Years later I finally understood what he was saying. Here I was, a sophomore still ringing wet behind the ears, not having a clue about what existed in the written record concerning everything about fossils.

Even if I understood and retained every word of what Dr. Caster taught in the Historical geology class for the entire year, I might have only known 0.00001 percent of all there was to know at that time about fossils.

Yes, I was indeed ignorant.

Each time I turned in my test, I knew I had failed it. Dr. Caster made a point to ask lots of questions, most of which there was never time to answer. How could I possibly pass if I didn't answer them?

That's the magical side of Dr. Caster. He knew we were Padawans. He knew we had no chance of truly understanding what he knew.

I have no memory ever of Dr. Caster returning graded tests. I have this sneaking suspicion he threw them in the garbage after skimming through them never lifting a finger to grade them.

Each quarter when my report card came in the mail I was astonished to see I had received an A for the class. Surely he had made a mistake.

No, he didn't.

Dr. Caster was measuring performance based on attendance and attitude. If you gave him your attention in class, watched him add to the air pollution by creating chalk dust, and you had the guts to show up for tests, you got an A.

I hope you had the good fortune to be taught by such a magnificent human being. I'm so very grateful to have been in his classroom.

Rest in Peace Dr. Caster. I wonder if you're chasing horseshoe crabs up in Heaven!